Thursday, September 16, 2010

Have You Been To Yala?

Since I embarked to the trails of my late grandpa's past CPO postings in Thailand, I have just covered Phuket last year and Yala recently at the troubled South of Thailand. For a while, I was worried about terrorists or fanatics who might bomb or behead someone while I was there.It was a safe and peaceful place with much interesting photos to share.

The highlight of this town Yala is their past notorious communist camps and activities during the reign of Chin Peng's era.

This is their town which is just 2-streets, running like a square box. Damn boring without shopping malls or exotic cafes.

I stumbled across a Rumah Tumpangan named Jacky Chan Hotel.

Believe it or not ~ this is the OLDEST and TALLEST mail box in the world!

In such a sleepy town, they have this 5-Star hotel where I stayed. It looked like 3-Star to me though their carpet & paint smelled new and their Chinese Restaurant served very delicious and fresh food.

They also have a very impressive Thai Buddhist Temple built by the Queen of Thailand with a real pure gold minaret above the pagoda tower.

There is a huge Buddha statue sitting majestically below the hilltop temple.

There are several smaller temples surrounding the monastery.

Next attraction was the well preserved communist camp and the above is the arch-entrance uphill.

After a long hike through the thick old jungles, I arrived at the 1st view-post of the communists.

This tunnel is where they had a hidden stove and the coal's smoke was cleverly filtered to prevent the police & army to detect their hideout for decades!

The above long tunnel is where their soldiers hid inside.

It was such a low, dark, damp and foul-smelling tunnel where I had to stoop my head all the way. I think the communists would never recruit a 6 footer like me who would pose as a threat instead.

Hello? Hello? Can you see me?

They even had bamboo a make-shift pavillion to host the marriages amongst the soldiers! They were not allowed to have babies, so the men had to 'tie' their genitals.

These were their cooking utensils with mud-clay steps for kitchen cabinet.

There is an interesting museum which stored all their confiscated stuffs after their fall & surrender BUT no photography was allowed. You know me, I just curi-curi snapped so that can share with you guys.

I was surprised that the communist flags changed their emblems several times.

21 comments:

tQ for dropping by. Yes been to the communist tunnel aka mouse hole long time ago, got a relative in Betong. Huh Jacky Chan hotel wonder he received any royalty? Interesting caption you have got on the land mine canisters & lemang. Great post. tQ

HAHAHAHA! The day while you were busy typing this post, I was actually busy doing some kacang shopping; lepaking at 7-Eleven & sweeping their Lay's; had some wonderful Thai meals and desserts, & bringing my colleagues who hv nvr been there around -- Haik! You beat me in the chase of writing Betong's post! -- You can actually get the loads of sexy, Thai gay mags - lor! But one thing I'm really disappointed with is the lack of gay massage or gay boys there! Kheksei!